Sioux Falls ups ante to lure teachers

Biggest salary boost in district will be devoted to recruiting against higher pay elsewhere

May 12, 2013

Carrie Aaron

Written by

Deb Merxbauer

Sioux Falls vs. other school districts

A new hire at the top of the Sioux Falls School District’s new salary schedule will make $7,333 more in his or her first year than the same candidate would have made in 2012-13. However, the new rate still is far less than what an experienced teacher can make in a neighboring state. First-year salary for a new hire with 10 years of experience and a master’s degree: $54,017 Sioux City, 2012-13 (next year’s salaries not yet determined) $53,589 Omaha, 2013-14 $52,699 Fargo, 2013-14 $44,624 Sioux Falls, 2013-14 $38,397 Brandon Valley, 2013-14 $38,000 Harrisburg, 2013-14 $37,291 Sioux Falls, 2012-13 Evaluating old and new teacher contracts: Starting teacher salary by previous years of experience 0-1 year

• $30,680 in 2012-13 • $33,299 in 2013-14 (8.5 percent increase) Two years

Todd Vik

Val Fox

A new five-year agreement with Sioux Falls teachers will add thousands of dollars to their salaries, but the deal will be even more lucrative for some educators in other cities and states.

Experienced teachers from other school districts who take jobs with Sioux Falls this spring will make 14 percent to 19.7 percent more in their first year than the same type of candidate made last year. For those at the top of the starting pay scale, with 10 years of experience and a master’s degree, that’s a $7,333 raise.

Principals say the boost should help them recruit veteran teachers. At Memorial Middle School, Carrie Aaron recalled hiring two candidates last year who were looking to return home to be closer to family after teaching in neighboring states.

“I hired them and they both called back … weeks later and said, ‘I can’t afford to teach in South Dakota,’ ” Aaron said.

Lincoln High School Principal Val Fox has seen fewer veterans apply for openings in recent years.

“I know I’ve had people look to us from Iowa or Minnesota, and we make sure they see the salary schedule before we bring them in,” she said. “They look at it and they just say, ‘Are you kidding me? I can’t take that much of a cut.’ ”

For most teachers on staff in Sioux Falls, the new negotiated agreement adds 8.54 percent to their yearly pay — making up for pay cuts tied to state K-12 funding reductions in 2011. Some longtime teachers will get smaller bumps because they are beyond the salary schedule, but everyone is guaranteed a raise of at least $1,000 this fall.

The biggest boost, however, will go to new hires who have been working for at least two years someplace else. The increases come with an expanded salary schedule intended to make Sioux Falls more competitive in recruiting that type of candidate: New hires will start on one of seven rows, depending on their experience, rather than one of five.

“Under the old salary schedule we were finding it difficult to hire experienced teachers,” Todd Vik, the district’s business manager, said by e-mail.

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“People with a lot of experience were having to take pay cuts to come to Sioux Falls,” said Deb Merxbauer, president of the Sioux Falls Education Association. “They want to hire the best, and if you are in a different district and you have to take a pay cut to come, you’re probably not going to come.”

Teacher experience is down in district

If the strategy works, it will reverse a trend that has produced the school district’s least experienced teaching staff in more than a decade.

According to the Department of Education, Sioux Falls teachers averaged 13.4 years of experience in 2011-12 — the most recent year available — when the state’s public schools as a group averaged 15.0 years. The DOE reports go back to 2000-01, and Sioux Falls public schools had never before averaged less than 13.8 years of experience in that time.

Last fall, school district spokeswoman DeeAnn Konrad told the school board that about half of the 160 teachers hired for the new school year had just graduated from college. Not long ago, the rule was about one-third of new hires had never had their own classroom. On average, the new hires for 2012-13 had 3.8 years of teaching experience, she said.

To a degree, the school district got younger on purpose.

The previous employment agreement put big money into early-career teachers at the expense of veterans, allowing a new hire to reach the top of the pay scale in 10 years. Meanwhile, an early retirement incentive pushed out hundreds of veteran educators, shaving millions off the district payroll.

Those savings have helped the district budget through difficult times. With the new employment agreement, they’re looking to spend down some of the $22 million general fund reserve left over from previous years.

New hires to make more than veteran educators

A side effect of the expanded salary schedule is inequity between new and current employees. Someone hired last year at the top of the schedule, with 10 years’ experience and a master’s degree, was paid $37,291. That person will get $41,487 in year two, thanks to a step increase and the 8.54 percent bump negotiated with the school board.

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However, an identical candidate hired this spring will make $44,624 in year one.

Expanded schedule no help to current employees

There’s a gap because current employees do not benefit from the expanded schedule. The above candidate would have entered the district on Row E; they have to stay there under the new schedule, even though Row E is now for new hires with 8-9 years’ experience and no master’s degree.

Merxbauer said it’s “very common” for such inequities to arise when the structure of a salary schedule is revised. She said the union and school board considered a placement grid as an alternative, to alleviate that inequity, but the proposal was “extremely confusing” and didn’t place certain employees where they should be.

Vik said moving current employees to new rows on the pay scale would have produced a different sort of inequity among veteran teachers.

“All options were considered, and both sides agreed to give similarly situated current employees (i.e., those on the same step) similar increases,” he said.

Ninety-six percent of the voting union members voted in favor of ratifying the agreement, Merxbauer said, so teachers evidently are pleased with the outcome. Still, special-education teacher Meagan Walsh said it’s unfair that she’ll be paid less than a new hire.

“I just think that … anybody who’s not there should be moved to that level,” she said.

Walsh had four years’ experience and a master’s degree when she moved to Sioux Falls in 2012 for her husband’s new job. Hayward Elementary hired her last spring for about $12,000 less than her previous teaching job in Illinois.

She will make $37,630 in her second year with the district. Had she taken this year off, she could have made $38,548 in 2013-14.

Overall, Walsh views the new employment agreement as a step in the right direction, even if it leaves Sioux Falls teachers still well behind those in other states.

She said she was the only teacher in her school to cross the picket line during a teachers union strike in Illinois, so she’s not in the profession for the money, but the smaller paychecks here came as a shock.

South Dakota ranks last in teacher pay. In 2011-12, the Sioux Falls district ranked 11th in average salary among the 151 South Dakota public school districts and 42nd in base pay.

“I moved here and I thought, wow, it doesn’t actually cover the cost of day care anymore,” Walsh said. “It’s a very different climate as far as teacher pay goes.”